Tuesday, August 12, 2008

No Rest for the Wicked

Having made my decision to focus on half marathons, I began my new run-focussed training plan Monday with a 5 mile easy run. For some reason, I thought doing it at the gym on a treadmill would be a good idea. I have no idea why. I have always hated the treadmill and Monday proved to be no different. But I got it done.

This morning I did my core stuff. The highlight for me was hanging on for 3x30sec of plank and 3x5-6 good form pushups. The lowlight was my v-ups and the rocking v-ups which both were pretty pathetic. I have an appt with Trainer guy tomorrow and he's planning to push me hard on this stuff. Yikes.

This evening I met up with the running group for some track work. We did 10miin warm up, 10x2min hard effort with 1 min rest in between, a short rest, then 5x1 min hard effort with 1 min in between, and ended with 10 min cool down. For the 1 min rests, I opted for 30sec of walking and 30 sec of jogging. I found the Garmin graph and stats to be very interesting, so I will share.

That 8:26 min/mi pace had me excited, but I was only doing that for about 400M lengths each time. When I check the MacMillan running calcuator, it tells me that is basically the speed I *should* be doing my 400M speed workouts at (based on my 5K time). I guess it's not a breakthrough.

Nice workouts! And I'm so happy that you sound much better about your direction with the 1/2 marathon :-) I find the TM really useful for tempo and speedwork since it helps drum in the goal pace during the repeats for me. And yey for being on pace, the McMillian calculator seems pretty accurate. V-ups and rocking v-ups are hard!

Terrific my friend!! Running those 5 miles, i don't know, just somehow really gets me going for the rest of the day! I do have to work on my pace though! I'm kinda slow! Today i did my last mile in just under 10 min!!

Oh the treadmill. You hung in there! I love/hate the plank. Love the accomplishment I feel when it's over...hate the obvious. I do one at 60s and one at 30s. Used to shoot for 2x60 but that was just too much for me!

It may not be a breakthrough now, but in weeks to come you will see your speed increase and the effort get easier as long as you continue on with this type of workout or any other they have you do. Consistency will pay off eventually. I am hoping not to get on a treadmill for at least 5 months!

I think half marathons may be the perfect distance race distance. I really enjoy training for them - at least, how I would train if I ran one - but, curiously, I've never actually run an offical half marathon. Keep on rockin'.

I was happy to discover your blog and have been checking out your workout history, and even though this is my first comment, I have some feedback on your track workout.

According to the GPS, notice how the interval times are on a gradual upslope from left to right? That means each interval was getting slower - not so great.

When I've had that happen to me, the next time I just dial back the speed on the first one or two repetitions so that they feel hard but not like "intervals", and what will happen is the progression would be something more like (in minutes per mile pace):8:358:358:308:308:298:25...etc. In other words, I turn the speed change on its head and gradually get faster, and then really blast the last one. It will feel way harder than the time will reflect, but it will still probably be the fastest interval of them all.

Good luck, take care, and thanks for reading my "negative" comment! :-)